Published: Feb 18, 2016, 01:18 PM (IST)
Edited: Feb 18, 2016, 01:18 PM (IST)
I am sure most of you would have opened this piece right after looking at Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma in the headline.
Rohit Sharma tied the knot, after a long courtship period with Ritika Sajdeh. Harbhajan Singh and Bollywood actress Geeta Basra too got married, finally in 2015, after a long time since they started seeing each other. Ajinkya Rahane married in September 2014, as did Cheteshwar Pujara back in February 2013. In case you did not remember, Varun Aaron too got married this year, and others in Mohit Sharma and Ravindra Jadeja got engaged recently.
Just like Virat Kohli, all these men are Indian cricketers. While Indian players enjoy massive fan-following for their cricket and activities off the field, it is the pair of Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma that generates the greatest amount of interest in the Indian society. ALSO READ – Virat Kohli: I am not a relationship counsellor
Be it remorseless fans, the media, and even laymen who would not care about cricket beyond India’s wins and Sachin Tendulkar’s on-field feats, they all have developed this mysteriously curious interest in Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma’s love affair. If we try to understand why these two young Indians generate such massive interest in the Indian society about their relationship, the obvious reasons that come out are: Virat Kohli is India’s batting superstar, and Anushka Sharma is a decent actress who has been getting her choice of movies spot on. Both are well-known public figures. ALSO READ: Virat Kohli enjoying life after break-up with Anushka Sharma?
But, what is not understandable is this: if Virat Kohli is an Indian batting superstar, is Rohit Sharma any less? Or are Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane? They too have won India many matches at home and overseas. Why this discrimination, this? Why is it that the pairs of Rohit-Ritika, Harbhajan-Geeta, Pujara-Pooja and even Rahane-Radhika never generate as much curiosity as the pair of Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma does? Maybe, since Anushka Sharma is a Bollywood actress and a widely-known public face, the others do not hog as much limelight as she does with Virat Kohli.
Or maybe, since Virat Kohli is among the most-searched Indian celebrities on internet, the websites battling for traffic and page-views start serving the developments in great details. Well, this is a fight that almost everyone in the online business is involved in! Just for fun, a writer had experimented once by putting in two of the most searched keywords in India in one of his pieces, Virat Kohli and Sex!
The results showed. I will not reveal how much online traffic it generated, but it was probably a little more than what India versus South Africa Test series did.
Indian cricket got a huge spike in fan-following after the 1983 World Cup win, and with television sets entering every household, it kept rising. It soared when Sachin Tendulkar and satellite television went in hand to make cricket India’s most-followed sport.
But in recent years, even those who do not understand the sport at all, are hounding these celebrities thanks to social media. Virat Kohli’s fans began liking Anushka Sharma, and vice versa. The pair became the nation’s most beloved and followed overnight — again thanks to social media and relentless pushing of stories and developments related to them by media houses. And now, as allegations of their separations have surfaced, people are itching to gather every bit of information they can, as if it is a matter of their lives and deaths.
There is also the curious case of media houses and journalists with integrity. Many claim they do not care about what cricketers do off the field, but deep down inside, they too want to know what is going around. Their browser histories, if checked carefully, may bear testimony to that.
Had it not been their backing, the love affair of Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma would have been reduced to just another celebrity humdrum. Media makes and breaks! If doing stories on them plays a part in earning bread and butter, why boast in public that you do not like doing what you do?
Agreed, that Bollywood and cricket are two fields that bring unbridled joys to Indians, and we all are a part of this cycle. We cherish cricketers earning success on the field; we enjoy being entertained by celebrities on the big and the small screens. While we do that, while we give them special recognition and place in our lives, we must also not behave like hypocrites. These double standards suck out some passion that these talented young Indians possess, which certainly is not good!
At the time of publishing, the news of Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma parting ways continued to dominate pure cricket news.
PS: Don’t mind the Virat Kohli-Anushka Sharma ‘Also Reads’.
(Devarchit Varma is senior writer with CricketCountry. He can be followed on Twitter @Devarchit)
